So I had to break the window
It was in my way
Better that I break a window
Then forget what I had to say

Or miss what I should see - "Window" by Fiona Apple

I've been enchanted by maybe the
most wonderful, delightful short film I ever saw Rufus
Jones for President - but I know that I'm not supposed to like it cause
its an old film with black people cracking jokes about eating watermelon and
stealing chickens. Not that that's the main point of the film, but that's
just totally unacceptable now, and it's hard to even try to find out anything
about a lot of early black movies like this for all the hand wringing about
"racism."

Using Rufus Jones as a microcosm
of modern public sentiments on such things, consider some of the public comments about this movie. For
example, a Taylor Bowie writes at IMDB "This really is a wretched bundle
of nasty racial cliches, but oh my, when Ethel Waters sings I can forgive and
forget all the vile and mean-spirited muck around her." Damn, that doesn't
sound any kind of nice, does it?

Likewise, one Dick Hunter posting at IMDB wrote "This must have
been an embarrassment to every member of the entirely African-American cast.
Every derogatory, disparaging stereotype of the black American community is
featured prominently. I won't reinforce the insults by listing them here, except
to mention chickens, watermelons, and dice."

This kind of thick hatred is a very common response to a wide
variety of early black cinema. This short film comes on a DVD with The
Green Pastures, a wonderful 1936 all-black movie about the Old Testament
story as it might have been understood by a black kid in a Louisiana Sunday
school circa 1930. But you apparently aren't supposed to be able to enjoy
this tainted but actually somewhat highbrow Broadway play turned high budget,
ambitious film because they depict Heaven as a big fish fry and they trowel on
the slang dialect a bit, talking about "de Lawd" and such.

Indeed, to be able/allowed to enjoy this really interesting and
unique window on 1936, we're apparently supposed to do the penance of sitting
through the feature commentary track by some or other obscure modern black
filmmakers whining about how bad their itty feelings are hurt by the supposed
horrible racism. Something like that. I'm not interested in hearing
the details of this.

Shut up already, damn. Some folks have nurtured the chips
on their shoulders until they're crushed under the weight of the boulders
they've grown. I'm sure this hurts tremendously, but it has little to do
with these perfectly wonderful films and everything to do with the arbitrary
intellectual and emotional limitations of their own little poisoned private
ideological BS (Belief Systems).

The ideological windows of some of these modern PC liberal
reality tunnels are covered with such a thick poisonous haze of resentment and
victimology that they can't see what they should see in this art. Thus, we
get some black folk who are anxious to nurse their grudges of racial victimhood
and white folks so anxious to prove that they're not "racists" that they
exaggerate and hallucinate to conjure up so much bile that it's a wonder they
can breathe.

Best I can tell, we're supposed to think that the Rufus Jones
movie was a racist plot forcing poor Ethel Waters et al to help mock and
subjugate their own race as part of the ongoing conspiracy by
The Man to degrade
and hold down the brothers. Every joke about black guys shooting dice
furthers the cause of the Klan, as by design. Something like that.

OK then - deep breath. I think my window has a little less
crud on it, so let's see if I can make any different sense out of this.
Actually, I don't see what's so awful, or so foreign and distant actually, about
Rufus Jones for President. In ciphering this out, I'm trying to
look at what's there, not what somebody now thinks they should have been putting
there. The principle questions would be who exactly made the film for what
intended audience, and what were the filmmakers intending to say?

Rufus Jones for President has an all black cast. Best I
can tell, it appears to have been intended primarily for a black contemporary
1933 audience. I'm imagining that this is somewhat black folks talking
amongst themselves, as per Eddie talking in Ice Cube's
Barbershop, saying things you
might not would say if there were white folks around. I would not presume that
this film accurately reflects contemporary black culture - these portrayals may
have been written and directed by white folks. Still, even - nay,
especially - greedy white Hollywood Jews made that money by appealing to an
audience.

Thus, I suspect that black folks would have mostly thought it
funny and warm and charming. That's certainly how it was intended to be
understood. Rufus looks to me like pretty much of a FUBU deal. With
the wondrous 7 year old singing and dancing sensation Sammy Davis, it's like
black folk got their own little Shirley Temple.

Actually though, I don't see how this is really so alien and
distant from modern black entertainment that's generally not considered
controversial, or is even championed by likely some of the same people bitching
about old stuff like Rufus Jones. For a specific point of comparison, I'd
liken the tone of the racial jokes in Rufus Jones for President to the Dave
Chapelle show. It's harsher than Bill Cosby, much milder than Richard
Pryor.

Actually, I thought of the effrontery of
Richard Pryor when studying on
Ethel Waters souped up version of "Underneath a Harlem Moon," in which she sings
"That's why we schvartzes were born." That sounds like throwing the mildly
derogatory Yiddish word back. It'd be like a much milder precursor to
Richard Pryor 40 years later carrying on about "niggers." The Rufus Jones
jokes about watermelon and chicken-stealin' would be fairly tame in the stream
of modern black standup comedians.

So what are we sophisticated and enlightened modern folks
supposed to make of this 70+ years later? Perhaps they're all suffering
from false consciousness, shamefully contributing to their own degradation.
I have to think stuff like that sometimes when I see
Snoop carrying on about
bitches and hos and poppin' caps into niggers asses and such. Some of that
still seems to me like
valuable art, but surely proudly representing some shameful dysfunctions.

But Rufus Jones for President is none of that. No
one in this film is acting in a hostile, depraved or degrading manner.
There are jokes about black guys carrying razors, but no one is even threatening
to use them. I wouldn't expect this portrayal to make anyone ashamed of
being black or make others think less of the black race anymore than I would
expect people to look down on rednecks after seeing a Jeff Foxworthy routine.
Larry the Cable Guy gives a much more slanderous portrayal of his ethnic group
than anybody in this film does for black folk. Particularly, note the
irony of these well dressed and fairly dignified high-steppin' senators in their
top hats and coats politely checking their razors.

Then again, maybe the creators had double and triple secret
depths of meaning and satire. The Dave Chapelle bit I remember most cast
Dave as an airline passenger forcing himself to order the fish rather than the
chicken that he really wants out of self-consciousness. Thus, it's not
really a joke about black folk liking chicken, but about black
self-consciousness and shame. Hell, that's starting to sound like art.
Maybe some of this Rufus stuff is jokes making fun of the stereotypes
themselves.

Also, consider that acknowledging and joking about the
stereotypes of your own people can be a way of distancing yourself from them, or
rising above them. Irving Berlin, for example, had a bunch of early
compositions that might be called
"Jewish
minstrel" songs such as "Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars,"
about an old Jew on his deathbed worrying about the debts that he's never going
to be able to collect. That could be Jewish self-hatred - seemingly
unlikely from Irving Berlin. It could be just callously catering to
prejudiced attitudes - though Jews were apparently the primary audience.
Or it could be a backwards way of laughing off such stereotypes as
inconsequential, or as something the author has risen above and can thus freely
joke about.

But all of this racial nonsense obscures the view. It's
like My Cousin Vinny's witness trying to positively identify the
murderers based on looking out of his dirty kitchen window through the crud
covered screen, and the leafy trees and bushes in the yard. In other
words, Rufus Jones for President isn't really about race at all.
That's secondary. We've all got so much poisonous racial crud on our
windows that we can't see what's actually on the screen.

Rufus Jones for President is about a mother's big dreams for her son - and a
rather touching and nuanced statement it is at that - at least for a musical
short. The whole thing is
framed as literally a mother's dream. Her little boy has gotten roughed up
on the playground and ran home crying to Mommy, who comforts him with a
prediction of great things to come. As they fall asleep in the rocking
chair, Mom dreams of her little boy becoming president.

The driving point of this is a demonstration of the mother's pride and joy in
her special little man. That's not particularly a racial thing, though
that adds some irony in the presumption that the book means what it says
about how "anybody born here can be president." Even for 99% of white
kids, such hopes are as likely as those "crazy old dreams" of John Mellencamp in
"Pink Houses." But that will for a mother to wish great things for her
special little guy is common across most racial boundaries. Perhaps this
type of emotional theme would appeal less to, say, Palestinian mothers ready to
send their babies off to blow themselves up while murdering Jews. Still,
this theme would seem to relate across most people of pretty much all ethnic
groups most of the time.

But there is one underlying dynamic in this film that does seem to be more
particularly about being a black mother. There's a special caution.
Even as she's dreaming of President Rufus Jones, she's worrying about her little
boy getting hurt. Again, the story is that Rufus has just been treated
mean. "Just stay on your side of the fence, and no harm will come to you."
she sings tenderly at the end of the film. That conflict between a mother's
hopes versus her fear is a fairly poignant underlying dynamic that warms and
illuminates all the silly extraneous jokes about watermelon and dice.

Beyond that, of course, the mother's dream is largely a framework for some
musical setpieces, including "Am I Blue?" which had been a hit for Ms Waters,
and especially the fascinating souped-up re-write of "Underneath a Harlem Moon."
The lyrics of the song as she performs it make rather a good apology for the
black man - perhaps a bit of a microcosm of that whole theme of being caught
between aspirations and reality. They've put away picking cotton, now
they're sporting Parisian hats and steppin' uptown - but still needing house
parties to pay the rent and a sense of humor about it as a critical coping
mechanism as they struggle to improve their lot.
.

Then there's the real star of the show: Rufus Jones himself,
Sammy Davis. This little dude was sharp. He could do a great soft
shoe, sing and just beam. This was contemporary to Shirley Temple, and she
didn't have squat on little Sammy for cute or talent. Shirley Temple was
setting the gold standard for child actors- so I don't mean to deny her due
credit, but this prime blast of Sammy does more for me than any Shirley Temple
movie ever did.

I'm just saying this film would be a piss poor recruiting film for the Klan,
cause I don't see anything but love. You'd have to be pretty severely hard
hearted to see President Sammy in his top hat dancing his little heart out and
not just want to hug him and kiss him and feed him and every little kid that
looks like him milk and cookies. Could you possibly get anything more
lovable than young Sammy belting out "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal,
You"?

Best I can tell, it's strictly a BYOH affair if you're hatin' after seeing the
mother beaming with pride over her fine little man like this. She's
certainly right to say, "You ain't never had a president that could do THAT!"
Damn straight. The mother love of Ethel Waters warms every frame of this
film.

On the other hand, some folks just get off on being offended, or worse, choosing
to feel hurt by any possible thing. It's like they get off more on having
hurt feelings than on digging some rare special grooviness from some of our
finest luminaries of that increasingly distant era.

They're missing out.

"Unto the pure all things are
pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even
their mind and conscience is defiled." Titus 1:5